The Small Hours
by Beloved-the-Fool
Summary: Wow. Worst. Title. EVER. But I was stuck for one, seriously. So this story is a set post-ep from Honey. It's my speculation on what happened after Foster closed that door. Disclaimer: Lie To Me isn't mine; I only wish it was.


_**A/N: This one-shot is a continuation of the episode Honey. I soooo wanted to know what happened after Foster's front door closed. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe something tawdry and naughty. Or maybe something a little like this.**_

* * *

_"Can I sleep in your spare bedroom tonight if it's not too much of a problem?"_

_"Of course."_

* * *

_Of course._

That was what she said, _verbally_.

_No._

That was what she said with her body language.

While her mouth had been forming the words "of course" - as though there wasn't a place in the world she would rather he was that night than in her spare bedroom – she had simultaneously shaken her head no. Mixed message, anyone? Not for the first time tonight, Cal tried to suss out what it might've meant. Not for the first time tonight, he sighed in resignation and rolled to his other side. Again. He felt rather like a rotisserie chicken.

He stared off into the darkness, tucking his fists under the pillow. This had been the longest day; he was positively knackered yet still so tense that sleep refused to claim him.

And so.

And so his overactive mind replayed that moment at the door at least a dozen times since he'd slid between the sheets that smelled far too much like her for his own good. He'd tried distracting himself. He tried to dwell on how Gillian had opened the door, opened her arms; she had hugged him too briefly but so fiercely that it instantly healed some of the unseen damage that Matheson had tattooed inside him. Damage he would _never_ admit to. But with Gillian, he would never need to. She would know it was there. She had been there. She saw him with that gun to his head. She saw the look in his eyes when she shed tears and pleaded for his life. Oh, how that had torn at him! Because he really thought he would die before the day was out, and that would be his final image of her and hers of him. Gillian had seen him at the end, shaken and unable to cope and running scared as he handed her the gun. And she had seen him on her doorstep tonight, broken and muddled and fidgety and still afraid. She saw it all, and she didn't call him on it. Didn't make him admit. To anything.

He loved her for that.

More.

He loved her _more_ for that.

Because the one, solitary thing that Cal had actually managed to suss out in this entire day was that there was absolutely no point in lying to himself anymore. Cos that's what he'd been doing since the day he and Gillian met and what he'd continued doing on a scale of greater magnitude with each passing year.

If anything good could come of a day like this one, Cal supposed that being honest with himself just might rate.

Unfortunately, the distraction was short-lived, and there he was on the doorstep again. Figuratively speaking.

She hadn't even invited him in straight away. She'd stood there with the door pulled against her, body language screaming, "NO ENTRY!" He'd had to ask his way in.

"Of course," she said with her voice.

_No_, she said with her head.

What the bloody hell did it mean?

Rotisserie chicken for one.

* * *

Gillian knew before she climbed into bed there was no way she would fall asleep. Not with so much on her mind. Not with everything that happened today. Not with Cal one wall away when all she wanted to do was hang onto him just to prove to herself that he really _was_ there and he really _was_ okay. Gillian rolled onto her back, stared blindly toward the ceiling of her darkened room and sighed softly.

When she opened her door earlier tonight to find Cal standing there, it was both surprising and not.

Surprising, because she had half-expected to get one of those middle-of-the-night drunken calls to come rescue him from a bar…or to not hear from him at all because he'd be too busy finding comfort between someone's perfumed sheets.

Not surprising because, well…it was Cal. And this was them. And quite honestly, very little of their dynamic surprised her anymore.

She was relieved, thought. Greatly relieved.

She had been sick with worry over him after he handed her that gun and walked out. Clearly, he was traumatized. She wanted so badly to go after him, but she knew he needed his space. She gave him that and just hoped he would need her. And if he needed her, she hoped he would come to her.

He had.

When she saw him on her doorstep looking so vulnerable, so rattled, so uncharacteristically subdued and un-Lightman-like, it took all of her restraint not to pull him into her arms then and there and never let him go. But she waited him out. He needed to do this on his own, come to his own conclusions. It had been a harrowing day for him; Gillian would do nothing to make him feel more vulnerable and unmanned than he already did.

She wondered how he was doing now on the other side of that wall in that spare bedroom. Was he sleeping? Was it peaceful? Did he dream? Or was he haunted by the image of Matheson's angry eyes or the feel of the cold metal pressed against his temple or the acrid smells of sweat and fear and gunpowder and blood in the air after Ben fired and brought Matheson down?

Gillian sat up and hugged her knees to her chest, staring at that wall as though she could see Cal right through it. She sat there and stared and replayed those awful moments over and over in her head. She had been so sure she would lose him. Matheson was going to kill him. And just like that, her rock – her anchor – would be gone from her life for good. He'd been part of her life for eight years. Less than a fourth of her life and yet…she couldn't imagine her life now without him in it. And then the tears came and with them, the crushing need to go look at him, just to reassure herself that he really was here and he really was okay.

Gillian pushed away the covers and slid quietly from her bed. She padded to her door, easing it open on silent hinges. Hesitantly, she crept toward the door of the spare bedroom and reached for the handle. She paused and listened, her ear pressed to the door. She heard nothing; but the longer she listened, the less sure she felt that she had any right to intrude. Her hand fell away from the handle, and she turned instead to her kitchen

* * *

That was where he found her.

He couldn't sleep. Apparently, neither could she since she was standing at her kitchen sink staring out the window at 2 in the morning. The moon was full and bright tonight, and the room was awash with its glow giving everything an otherworldly cast. It made her look like an angel.

He spoke softly so he wouldn't startle her. "Gill?"

She startled nonetheless, smiled wearily and regarded him with tired eyes. "Hey, you. Why aren't you asleep, huh? Did I wake you?"

Cal shrugged. "Nah. Y'know. Just…can't." He chewed his lip and looked intently at the floor near her feet as though the answers to all of life's questions were written there.

"Hey," Gillian said gently. Cal lifted his eyes to hers. "Tea?" she offered simply.

Cal gave her a small smile of appreciation and nodded. Gillian filled her kettle and set it on the stove. From a cupboard, she pulled down a ceramic teapot and a small canister of tea. She walked past Cal and into her living room. She took two teacups from her china cabinet and brought them into the kitchen, setting them on the counter beside the teapot. Cal watched her, feeling strangely comforted by the ritual. It reminded him of home, when he was a child and things were simple.

The kettle sang, and Gillian poured just a bit of hot water into the pot, swirled it around thoroughly then poured it out. She opened the tea tin and scooped several spoonfuls into the pot then added the water and put on the lid. From a drawer, she produced a cosy and fitted it over the teapot while it steeped. "Milk and sugar?" she asked.

Cal tilted his head and regarded her curiously. "Where did you learn to make proper English tea instead of taking all the standard American shortcuts, eh?"

Gillian hummed a little laugh. "Oh, we have our Miss Emily to thank for that. I taught her to bake. She taught me the 'right' way to make tea. 'The _only_ acceptable way for civilized people to make tea', according to Emily. At least, that's what she said her father taught her."

"Sounds like a wise man, her father," Cal mused. His voice, though, lacked it's usual warmth. That made Gillian's heart ache.

"So," she tried again. "Milk? Sugar?"

"Ah, splash of milk, two sugars. That's me. Thanks, luv."

Tea prepared, they took their cups to the living room and settled side-by-side on the sofa. They sat drinking their tea in the moonlit silence of the small hours of the night.

When Cal spoke, his voice seemed almost to be absorbed by the darkness in the corners of the room.

"I was scared, Gill. Really scared." He looked at her, eyes betraying everything he was feeling, everything he was far too spent and weakened to properly conceal. Or maybe there was just no reason for concealment here and now, in the safety of this setting, with this woman.

"I was, too," she gently agreed.

"I thought that was the end," he added.

"Me, too," she whispered, letting her head fall back onto the sofa and reaching out to take his hand in hers.

He edged closer and rested his head on her shoulder. Tucking her feet up under herself, she turned her body in toward him so she could wrap her free arm around him and hold him to her. In response, his other arm curled loosely around her middle, and he seemed to fold in closer to her as though needing to occupy the same space.

"Thanks, Gill," he whispered.

Gillian didn't respond straight away, just stroked the back of his hair for a few minutes then dropped a light kiss to the top of his head as it rested against her. "For what?" she finally asked.

"I dunno. For everything? But mostly this. You and me, like this. Couldn't do this with anyone else. Gillian." He sniffed softly, and his grip around her tightened possessively. "No one else in the world I trust more than you, darlin'."

Her grip on him tightened just as possessively. They may not have been a couple in the traditional sense, but you'd have been hard-pressed to find two more kindred spirits. "For the record, Cal? You and me, like this? You never need to say thanks for this. It's just the way it's supposed to be."


End file.
